Dinosaurs run amuck in Botanic Gardens cafe

Access to the café at Auckland
Botanic Gardens was restricted for a period today, following
sightings of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the dining area.https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Café
Miko Manager Dereck Owen says, “She ordered the carnivore
special but spat out the salad. It was fascinating to see
how she managed a knife and fork with those tiny arms and no
opposable thumbs.”

The café was able to reopen as soon
as the errant dinosaur had been herded back to the Gondwana
Forest section of the Gardens.

“Our Gondwana Forest
contains the descendants of plants that dinosaurs would have
roamed among at the time New Zealand was part of the
Gondwana supercontinent 200 million years ago. However,
dinosaurs are not supposed to be roaming in the café, where
there is no seating large enough to accommodate them,”
says Auckland Botanic Gardens Manager Jack Hobbs.

The
Tyrannosaurus Rex is the star of an innovative,
larger-than-life dinosaur performance and display that also
features a raptor and a crested therapod. The dinosaur
encounters are free and will run on weekends at the Auckland
Botanic Gardens from 19 November 2016 until 5 February 2017,
except for a short break over Christmas.

Botanic Gardens
staff have already taken more than 10,000 bookings for the
encounters.

“It’s already shaping up to be a very
popular holiday attraction and we urge Aucklanders to pace
themselves and try coming after the first rush. We’ll have
three shows a day on most weekends – at 10.30am, 1.30pm
and 3pm – so as many people as possible get to enjoy our
dinosaur friends,” says Jack.

Free activities for
children, including digging for fossils, will also take
place in the visitor centre, where there will be a display
of fossils, prehistoric plants and reproduction dinosaur
bones. While entry to the dinosaur encounters is free,
visitors are encouraged to bring some spare change for
activities in the Dinosaur Zone and to buy their own
dinosaur to take home.

“We will also have a “dinosaur
ranger” on hand during encounter weekends to provide
information about the Gondwana habitat. Children will be
able to imagine life as it was when these giant beasts
roamed the earth,” says Jack.

Scoop Citizen Members and ScoopPro Organisations are the lifeblood of Scoop.

20 years of independent publishing is a milestone, but your support is essential to keep Scoop thriving. We are building on our offering with new In-depth Engaged Journalism platform - thedig.nz.
Find out more and join us:

The focus of Labour’s alleged sexual assault scandal has now shifted from the party organisation to the Beehive... This is now a crisis of Beehive management and response, not something occurring at a distance within the party organisation.

Presumably, the QC appointed to clarify what happened will eventually shed light on key issues. Such as: on what date prior to the publication of the original Spinoff article did the party hierarchy/PM’s office/PM’s press secretary realise they were dealing with a sexual assault allegation, and what did they do about it at that point? More>>

ALSO:

An official pardon for Tūhoe prophet and leader Rua Kēnana is one step closer after the Te Pire kia Unuhia te Hara kai Runga i a Rua Kēnana: Rua Kēnana Pardon Bill was read in Parliament for the first time today. More>>

“We have listened carefully to the growing calls from New Zealanders to know more about our own history and identity. With this in mind it makes sense for the National Curriculum to make clear the expectation that our history is part of the local curriculum and marau ā kura in every school and kura,” Jacinda Ardern said. More>>

Jacinda Ardern: “This morning I was provided some of the correspondence from complainants written to the party several months ago. It confirms that the allegations made were extremely serious, that the process caused complainants additional distress, and that ultimately, in my view, the party was never equipped to appropriately deal with the issue…" More>>

A recent trip to China has raised questions over who the Opposition leader Simon Bridges met with and why... Anne-Marie Brady, a Canterbury University professor and expert on Chinese politics, has described Guo Shengkun as the leader of the Chinese secret police. More>>

Torture is a crime under international law. New Zealand has signed (a) the UN convention against torture and (b) formal agreements about how armed conflict should be conducted. That’s the legal backdrop to the fascinating report released this week by the SIS Inspector-General.